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Release on Bail of WikiLeaks Founder Is Delayed by Appeal

Supporters of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, gathered at a London courthouse for his bail hearing on Tuesday.Credit
Paul Hackett/Reuters

LONDON — Julian Assange, the jailed founder of the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, was ordered freed on $315,000 bail on Tuesday but remained at least temporarily in custody awaiting a final decision on whether he will be extradited to Sweden over allegations of sexual offenses against two women.

Mr. Assange was driven back to Wandsworth Prison in London on Tuesday night, past cheering and whistling supporters and scores of flashbulbs, pending an appeal of the bail ruling by the Swedish authorities, which must be heard at Britain’s High Court within the next 48 hours. Court officials said the appeal would be heard on Thursday, with details arranged on Wednesday, The Associated Press reported.

Judge Howard Riddle, presiding over a packed and rapt courtroom at Westminster Magistrate’s Court in Central London, said that his decision to jail Mr. Assange as a “serious flight risk” at an initial hearing on Dec. 7 was “marginal” and that, with conditions, Mr. Assange should now be freed until further proceedings on Jan. 11.

Judge Riddle was swayed Tuesday, he told the court, when a friend of Mr. Assange offered to allow him to stay at a lavish country mansion in Suffolk, an hour away from London. Mr. Assange, according to conditions the judge laid out, must spend every night at the mansion, Ellingham Hall, a 10-bedroom home on a 650-acre estate owned by Vaughan Smith, the wealthy founder of a journalists’ club in London.

Geoffrey Robertson, one of Britain’s most prominent lawyers, who is assisting Mr. Assange’s defense team, described it in court as less house arrest, more “mansion arrest.” But Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, will also be electronically tagged to track his movements and must agree to curfews — from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Additionally, he will be stripped of his passport and will be required to present himself to the police every evening.

Mr. Assange, in a dark blue suit and white shirt, his naturally gray-blond hair growing back through brown dye, had looked pensive during the hearing, his head often resting on his hand. But he smiled at his mother, present in the public gallery, and offered a thumbs-up as he heard the decision. His principal lawyer, Mark Stephens, told reporters that his client had been subjected to “Victorian conditions” in a segregation cell at the London jail over the past week.

His incarceration has not stanched the controversial flow of classified American documents from WikiLeaks, the most recent drawn from some 250,000 diplomatic cables, mostly between American diplomats abroad and the State Department in Washington.

As figures in the Obama administration weigh whether to prosecute Mr. Assange for his repeated dissemination of secret United States materials, his lawyers have darkly hinted that the Swedish extradition is motivated by a political conspiracy. Mr. Assange himself has called the allegations a “smear campaign.”

Critics and supporters alike have seized on the controversy, describing Mr. Assange alternately as a villain and traitor or as a hero and martyr. Indeed, many of the 100 or so fervent fans of Mr. Assange outside the court on Tuesday refused to believe that the Swedish charges — which relate to allegations of sexual misconduct on three occasions with two young Swedish women in Stockholm last August — were not politically motivated.

Photo

Many of the 100 or so fervent fans of Mr. Assange outside the court on Tuesday refused to believe that the Swedish charges were not politically motivated.Credit
Oli Scarff/Getty Images

“The timing is too coincidental,” said one woman, who gave her name only as Timi, holding up the words “Exposing war crimes is no crime” on a placard.

In court on Tuesday, Gemma Lindfield, the lawyer for the Swedish authorities, emphasized that the extradition attempt was “not about WikiLeaks” but centered on crimes “of a serious sexual nature.” The two women informed the authorities that consensual relations with Mr. Assange in Sweden, over a four-day period, had turned nonconsensual. Last week, in the initial hearing, the court was told that the charges involved three incidents, including one in which Mr. Assange was alleged to have had unprotected sex with one of his accusers while she was asleep. Swedish authorities characterize the encounters as “rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion.”

Mr. Assange has repeatedly disputed the accounts, and Mr. Robertson told the court that, in a previous interview with the Swedish authorities on Aug. 30, Mr. Assange had denied any wrongdoing “fully, firmly and convincingly.”

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His lawyer, Mr. Stephens, said in an interview with the journalist David Frost that the Swedish authorities had neither delineated the charges against Mr. Assange nor shown him the evidence. He added that the Swedish actions were “nothing more than a holding charge” to make Mr. Assange available to the United States, should it choose to seek his extradition in connection with the leaking of the American diplomatic and military cables.

Mr. Stephens asserted that the Swedish authorities had said that “they will defer their interest in him to the Americans,” and that a grand jury had been impaneled in Alexandria, Va., that was currently hearing evidence of Mr. Assange’s role in exposing the diplomatic cables. Justice Department officials have refused to discuss whether there is such a grand jury hearing the case.

The assertions could not be verified, and the Swedish prosecutors could not be immediately reached for comment. But in an earlier interview, one of them, Marianne Ny, referred obliquely to the possibility that Mr. Assange might end up in the United States. In discussing the procedure for extraditing a person who has been surrendered to Sweden, the prosecutor said the authorities would need the consent of the country that gave the prisoner up. “Sweden cannot,” she said, “without such consent extradite a person, for example to the U.S.A.”

The latest twist, following others in Sweden that saw the case dropped, then reopened in a different jurisdiction in recent months, began a week ago when a Swedish prosecutor submitted an arrest warrant for Mr. Assange. At his arraignment, at a central London police station, Mr. Assange, according to statements given in court last week, refused to give fingerprints, a DNA sample or even an address.

In that first hearing, Judge Riddle had seemed troubled by the refusal to provide a fixed location and agreed with the prosecution that there were “significant grounds” for thinking Mr. Assange posed a flight risk. He cited Mr. Assange’s “nomadic lifestyle,” his lack of ties in Britain, his network of international contacts and his access to substantial sums of money donated by supporters.

This time, he said that the concerns had been “handsomely” addressed by Mr. Smith, the mansion’s owner, who stood up among other supporters in court to explain that Mr. Assange would be under the supervision of his family if allowed bail, and that Mr. Assange was unlikely to flee. In addition, he said, domestic staff members at his mansion “will be reporting” to him on Mr. Assange’s movements.

An Australian broadcaster, 7 News, reported that in a 10-minute telephone conversation with his mother, who had flown from Australia to be in London on Tuesday, Mr. Assange declared: “My convictions are unfaltering. I remain true to the ideals I have always expressed. These circumstances shall not shake them. If anything, this process has increased my determination that they are true and correct.”

In prison, Mr. Robertson told the court, Mr. Assange is allowed very limited access to information. This ban extended, he said, even to a copy of Time magazine with Mr. Assange, an American flag over his mouth, on the cover.

Correction: December 15, 2010

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the location of the mansion where Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, would stay if a decision granting him bail is upheld on appeal. The mansion is in Suffolk, not Sussex.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Berlin, and J. David Goodman from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on December 15, 2010, on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Founder of WikiLeaks Is Ordered Freed on Bail. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe